To ask for high calorie recipes my 5yo might actually eat...!

[YukoandHiro]

I'm close to losing my mind with my 5yo and her eating.

Short history:
Severe CMP and egg allergies (epi pen carrier)
Never been keen on food from day 1 of weaning
Was ok weight (25th centile) til I stopped BF at 2y 8m
Since then has slimmed down a lot. August birthday so smallest in her class by far - skinny and very short, dropped off the charts for weight by age now but probably just running along the bottom by height (she is in age 4 clothes for height but the waists are always loose).

I'm worried about her weight and her attitude to food. Every meal is a battle with screaming and crying except for the obvious beige foods like sausage chips and beans. She has school lunches as she won't eat packed lunches but often apparently only eats fruit and bread the whole day.

Obvs I can't load foods with cream/cheese

She's never drunk much milk (Oatly or Alpro growing up) and we battle to get enough calcium into her daily.

We try so hard to follow Division of Responsibility but I do get frustrated and I've definitely done a lot of bribing around pudding rather than leaving her hungry just to get the calories in her.

This is a long way of saying - has anyone got any ideas for calorie loaded foods that might actually be attractive to her? All she eats is bloody beige carbs and fruit, and then not much of it.

You can still fortify DD’s food with milk free alternatives. DS1 has multiple allergies including milk and we fortify his food with free from milk, cream, butter, cheese, crème fraiche. We also use olive oil and avocado oil.

Elmlea isn’t suitable for those with a milk allergy, even the vegan ones.

One week of meals they will eat - have an easy week for all of you. No battles or comments. Don’t talk about food at all or comment how much anybody has eaten. Make meal times pleasant.

slowly introduce new food alongside accepted foods. It can take time to broaden their tastes and I mean a long time can be years.

you need to stop stressing calories and think of meals. Serving snacks while they watch TV or play on a tablet is a good way of adding calories.

nuts,, peanut butter and avocado were not foods a lot of us were brought up with and we still grew! A lot of people think they are the answer but it’s all just food.

some kids and adults find eating boring. Some have ASD and have an issue with textures and flavours.

My 5 year old is very similar, not allergic to anything but extremely picky and a light eater who weighs 31lbs.

Lately I've been giving her noodles with olive oil added, and her favourite high cal breakfast is porridge mixed with Nutella and a spoonful of almond butter. I also mix ground flax seeds in.

Hope this helps, bloody bean poles.

We went through a stage of a bowl of readybrek or porridge for supper just before bed every night as part of bedtime routine. Made the difference between too thin and thin for DC.

I struggle to put weight on my DS (now 7).
he’s not CMA but doesn’t like dairy so he might be a bit intolerant.
some things that have helped us:
porridge with coconut milk morning and night - with scoop of Nutella or golden syrup.
lots of protein - steak and salmon are good.
rice is also good for adding weight - and rice pudding if she will eat it. And pasta!
broccoli is high in calcium so give lots of that if you can.
cashew or macadamia nuts are very calorific if she can have those
apricots are high in iron (dried ones are yummy)
malt extract is also great for adding calories (you can get it in health food shops). Spoonful a day.
i’d also be pushing for more ideas from the dietician - meal plans etc

There's some really good bliss ball recipes online, they taste treaty and fudgy but you can load them up with coconut oil, seeds, coconut, oats and dried apricots. Fun for little hands to make too.

I add oats and soy yoghurt to my kids smoothies when he's in a "no food" phase, to bump the calories. Also avocado in smoothies makes them really creamy and calorie rich. You could blend with oat milk and cocoa for a chocolate milkshake, or avocado, pineapple, lime, mint, cucumber and apple is an amazing combo!

Vegan banana pancakes made with chia and flax seeds are good and high protein/ decent calories too.

You can also do a Vegan mac and cheese, with butternut squash blended into the sauce, and maybe add pancetta?

Good luck with getting back to the dietician, and hope that you can make progress on the "egg ladder" soon.

I noticed the other week that lard in the supermarket was cheaper than the cheapest butter and margarine ...

One thing about supplements - the Fortijuices are probably good for some but not suitable for milk allergy. (you'd need to get advice as to whether they are likely to be ok for your daughter if she's now tolerating some limited forms of dairy) My sister was prescribed some as a protein supplement in hospital some weeks back, and when I visited was commenting that she struggled to drink them. We looked them up and discovered that although they are lactose and gluten free, they still contain milk proteins as their main protein source. Not at all obvious.

Sympathetic noises from me - our youngest was tiny (compared to us who are giants ) and ate like a flea.
She was under review by the hospital and dietician but I found the latter to be rubbish
She (and I ) also have nut allergies.
Lots of good ideas here but the one that really worked is offering 'snack plates ' regularly than waiting for meals (although she has those too).
Her stomach was just too small for large meals.
Offering when they were watching tv seemed to work well. Also something before bed
She's still very slim but no longer skeletal and can eat some big meals if she chooses

Oranges and porridge will fill you up without many calories.

It honestly sounds like it's all turned into a bit of a negative 'battlefield' experience OP and who could blame you! It sounds like you've had a rough ride with food allergies. I don't usually believe in 'pandering' to kids but if she's losing weight I'd definitely just give her whatever she wants but then have Tapas style offerings of new foods with no fuss if she won't try but big praise if she does. She's probably actually quite fearful of food after everything so just try and make it relaxed and fun. I think once you've reset the clock a bit you might be able to be firmer but for now I'd just give her the beige. X

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has responded to this thread. Hearing others' similar stories and also getting lots of good food ideas from the thread has made me feel a lot less overwhelmed by it all.
This evening I decided to take all the stress out of dinner and basically let them do exactly as they wanted. I served toast, beans and cocktail sausages and we had it on a rug in front of the tv like a picnic. Then oranges and strawberries with malted milk biscuits afterwards. Most of it was eaten and no tantrums. Ok it's not the best tea but it's not the worst either. And everyone feels calmer and happier.
Will try to keep these vibes going even for the less welcome meals.

Friend was mixing Huel type of powder into her boy's drink. Just a small portion because he was very bad eater (medical reasons). It worked from what I gather

What does she drink? Maybe encourage a few extra cups of fruit juice or soya drinks instead of water - it won't stay long in the stomach to fill her up but contains loads of extra calories. Serve with a silly straw to make it fun.

Good idea @containsnuts - she loves water and often asks for it over milk, although I always try soya or Oatly milk first

Picnic dinners work great here too. As do muffin cup meals, you basically put everything you would give for lunch in the individual segments of a muffin tin. My kid loves that, and it's just simple bits like plain pasta, chopped sausages, cheese cubes, fruit, veg, munchy seeds etc but something about lots of tiny portions that they can control what they choose from, works really well. I let him pick at it all afternoon. I also do frozen yoghurt dots, you make them on a baking tray with greaseproof paper, blobs of yoghurt - you could add cream to it, oats, fruit puree etc , freeze it and then pour into a tub when frozen.

Our fussy eater DD loves rice loaded with butter and grated cheese mixed in to melt. We always give her pudding to add calories too (yogurt, ice cream, tinned peaches, rice pudding, raspberries, custard, bananas). She likes cherry tomatoes so I always serve these on the side, and sliced cucumber. She is skinny but active. She drinks orange juice and milk - I used to get full fat milk in for her. She is now 9 and loads better at trying new foods - weirdly she likes a bean stew we make with coconut milk that is much healthier, she’ll have multiple portions when she likes something, and only pick at her food the rest of the time.

I would agree with giving her what she will eat, partly to give her energy, partly to fill her because life in general is SO much harder to face if you are hungry, partly to build a habit of being at a table eating and partly to reduce the stress for everyone around dinner.
Do introduce other food items on the plate with the beige and tbh id limit the reactions or praise if she does eat something else, be very matter of fact about it all (easier said than done I know, you feel like having a parade everytime they eat a piece of fruit!). Great ideas here for the different foods to introdice but i really think taking away the stress inso much as you can will help too.
Getting her involved in things like making bread, making pizza, creating a sandwich and focusing on the fun side of it rather than the end result of having to eat it might help too.

I think in the short term the most important thing is to try to get you all in a place where mealtimes are no longer stressful. To do this I'd stop thinking about high calorie foods/calcium etc and just make a list of all the foods she'll eat with minimum fuss. Then just give her these foods each meal for a few weeks and if she doesn't eat much don't stress. After a while hopefully mealtimes will feel like less of a battle. Once you feel you're in that comfortable place I'd then add 1 piece of 'new' food each mealtime, in addition to the usual foods that she eats. If she tries the new food great, and encourage her to have at least a bite, but if she won't again don't stress about it because you don't want it to feel like a battle. Just keep introducing the small piece of new food each meal and eventually she will try them and you should gradually be able to add more foods to the list that she eats. It's a slow process but honestly it's not the end of the world if she only eats a few foods at this age, its better that she's eating something. And it's also better to focus on making mealtimes/food feel less of a battle, it'll help so much more in the long term and honestly when she's older I'm sure she will eat lots of foods. My oldest son was pretty fussy his favourite food was pasta with butter! But even now age 15 we are still adding foods to the list of things he'll eat - this week he decided he likes salmon, something I've suggested and offered him for 15 years!!

When I was struggling to put weight on my (fussy, vegetarian) DD at a similar age I remember finding recipes for protein smoothies which were made with tofu. You couldn't taste the tofu when they were all blended up and they were a big hit with DD. Could you try something like that?